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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 16, 2019 9:43:01 GMT -6
Today is the Seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. www.foxnews.com/world/allies-germany-battle-of-the-bulge-anniversaryThis was the last throw for the German Wehrmacht. It attacked through the Ardennes Forest with the goal being the Meuse River and then Antwerp. It was designed to surround the British forces in the north. It penetrated a weakly held section of the US line. Bastogne was a central road junction but the US 101st Airborne was rushed in to the city along with the CCB of the 10th Armored Division to occupy and hold the city. This was key to the defeat of the German attack. The attack on the center was led by Hasso Von Maneuffel of the 5th Panzer Army.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 16, 2019 18:33:02 GMT -6
Just in the remote possibility, that someone might be interested in this combat operation, here is a link to an excellent account by the US Army. www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Ardennes/index.htmlMany who have read the books and other documents about this operation wonder "How could Hitler have been so stupid?". Well, hope springs eternal. Hitler felt that the US and the Allies were weak democracies and that when pushed, they would seek an armistice and quit fighting. Sound familiar? Yes, this is exactly the attitude of the Japanese government when it attacked Pearl Harbor. It did not work for them and would not have worked for Hitler. In fact, the July 1944 Putsch which failed, probably even if it had succeeded, would never have pushed the Allies into dealing with the Nazis if Hitler had been killed. So, in the end, it probably would not have mattered. The Allies would have reeled, then pushed back because the Soviets would never have stopped and the Italian's were already out of the war.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 16, 2019 20:05:14 GMT -6
I don't mean to bore anyone over this operation but the question could be asked: Why did the 1944 Ardennes Offensive fail but the 1940 operation succeeded. Here are three reasons I believe are valid.
1. Five years of war. After five years, the German's were now facing two of the worlds most powerful economic powers: the US and Soviet Union. The German's had expended men and material that they could not replace. They were now fighting on three fronts. They were now being bombed around the clock. All these made a big difference.
2 The Allies had had five years to learn, understand and prepare a defense for combined Operations. The Germans were not facing a country whose armed forces were still preparing for trench warfare like the French. Another big difference. In fact the Allies had learned in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and the race across France how to conduct combined operations, this was important.
3. Air superiority. The German's no longer had air superiority over the battlefield. In fact, the December 16th date was chose because it was going to be cloudy and stormy for about a week which would ground the Allied Air forces. The German's had been fighting in Russia so they were familiar with Combined Arms operations in bad weather. In fact, when the weather cleared, the game was over. If the German's moved something, we went after it.
Anyway, these are three of my reasons why this operation failed, there are probably more, but I think these are the best.
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Post by dohboy on Dec 21, 2019 19:44:55 GMT -6
I haven't been around much lately (I'm like that) and I haven't digested your gifts yet, but I fully intend to and I appreciate your offerings. You aren't boring me yet. My grandfather (step-grandfather if you want to get technical about it, but he was my grandfather as far as either of us was concerned) was there. Lots of stories. military.wikia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Van_EveryFor fans of Band of Brothers he was in Dog Company of the same battalion. He made it all the way to Germany but went home on points before the very end of the excitement, you can see why if you clicked on the link and understand what you're looking at. The one that made him catch the boat was the purple heart's second oak leaf cluster, he snuck away from his minders with the other two.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 22, 2019 7:48:20 GMT -6
I haven't been around much lately (I'm like that) and I haven't digested your gifts yet, but I fully intend to and I appreciate your offerings. You aren't boring me yet. My grandfather (step-grandfather if you want to get technical about it, but he was my grandfather as far as either of us was concerned) was there. Lots of stories. military.wikia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Van_EveryFor fans of Band of Brothers he was in Dog Company of the same battalion. He made it all the way to Germany but went home on points before the very end of the excitement, you can see why if you clicked on the link and understand what you're looking at. The one that made him catch the boat was the purple heart's second oak leaf cluster, he snuck away from his minders with the other two. It's a family member to be proud of. Thanks for providing this very nice information.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 22, 2019 11:33:27 GMT -6
I don’t believe it is necessary to delve into the details of this combat operation, there are good sources on the web for that, but I am just going to provide my observations on it.
Modern 20th century warfare has been characterized as attritional warfare. I am not certain I agree with that declaration entirely. I don’t believe it explains how the events of this century occurred and why. I would characterize it as an age of logistics. This does not mean that in the century previous that combat operations did not rely on logistics, I am certain that the Franco-Prussian, Austro-Prussian wars certainly required much better supply management than the Napoleonic War. However, with the advent of weapons like the machine gun, bolt action rifles, the hydraulic recoil mechanisms of the artillery, just to name a few, supply of ammunition became even more vital. With mechanization, the need for fuels became important. With these changes, the support networks for the armies extended all the way to the nation. One book calls it the Wars of the Accountants. All these improvements now required more natural resources and industries. Many nations did not have them. This and the aggrandizement of smaller countries into larger, now forced nations to seek those natural resources around the world. We now call it globalization and it started prior to the 20th century, somewhere in the late 19th century.
So, what does this have to do with the 1944 Ardennes offensive? Well, in my opinion, quite a bit. Hitler had decided in around September of 1944 to attack and destroy about 20-30 divisions somewhere, to give Germany some time to increase its forces but more importantly to stop the Russians who had already destroyed Army Group Center and had operations in the Ukraine leading to the Soviet advance into Romania and Bulgaria into Yugoslavia and to the Hungarian Plain. Remember the logistical issue, much of German’s oil came from the Romanian oil fields which were now gone to them. So, where to attack?
Certainly, attacking in Italy made no real sense. It was not a strategically important area of operations. Attacking in the east, destroying 20-30 Russian divisions would have little effect on the Russians. So, it would be in the West that the attack would be launched. Why? Hitler had no real respect for US soldiers based on their performance in Tunisia, he felt that with a little push, they might seek an armistice. The German’s were also aware of the logistical problems that the Allies were having because the French ports and Antwerp were still not completely usable, some were still occupied by their soldier’s others were still heavily damage. So, Allied supplies, in the bulk, came through the artificial harbor on the Normandy Coast and that had been damaged by a storm. They were also aware of the damage they had inflicted on the rail system in France, so the Allies had to rely on the Red Ball Express. By September, the Allied race across France had stopped due to these problems. The German’s launched some minor attacks in the Ardennes region pushing US soldiers back to Schnee Eifel and other locations so they were aware of the weakness of this area.
The Ardennes offensive was based on these two assessments. That the Allied supply lines were stretched, and that the US was a weak partner that if it took heavy losses, might seek an armistice. It was a gamble that Hitler wanted to take and he did.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 22, 2019 14:55:41 GMT -6
I found some more detailed information about natural resources lost by the German's. Rumanian oil, Finnish and Norwegian nickel, copper and molybdenum, Swedish high-grade iron ore, Russian manganese, French bauxite, Yugoslavian copper and Spanish mercury. Some of this was lost to the Allies but some were lost because the tide of war was now turning against the Germans and the neutrals decided to deny these resources to them. These are some valuable resources for war production.
I believe that in his mind, Hitler felt that if the German Army could make this offensive happen successfully, it might bring those neutrals back into his corner. Hope springs eternal but I believe that it was lost.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 25, 2019 15:12:11 GMT -6
The question that has been asked for many decades since the 1944 Wacht am Rhein is simple; how could the Allies have missed the concentration of twenty division with 410,000 men, 2600 artillery pieces and multiple-rocket launchers along with 1400 tanks and assault guns. This mass was on a 68 mile front, facing the First Army. There have been many submitted reasons ranging from a conspiracy to blaming one man in First Army G-2 who was a known pessimist. However, in reality, it was a complex road to the failure to notice this build up. It's hard to fathom, at least for me, that an Allied force with almost total air-superiority, and the best signal intelligence in the world along with their complete study of the build up of the German armed forces since the defeats of the previous summer in both the east and west could have simply missed this whole offensive build-up.
Failures such as these generally result from personality differences, and a poor interpretation of many clues, however subtle. This is essentially what happened at Pearl Harbor in some ways. Military intelligence gathering, analysis, and distribution has been around since before the fall of Jericho. In modern times it has gotten very complex. There are intelligence sections at almost all levels of command. The sources are varied although spies don't really contribute much to the tactical or operational level, there information is more for the strategic level.
I feel that it was a failure on the Allied side and good security on the part of the Germans. Hitler apparently did not believe that his radio traffic was secure so all preparation via orders were sent by telephone and telegraph lines, not radios. He was right on this matter. German force names were also changed to deceive the Allies as to their real function. This was partially effective. The German's also performed their assemblage of forces in an ambiguous way, as one author puts it, to confuse the Allies.
For the Allies I firmly believe that maybe victory disease had set in after their success in France and partial success in Market Garden. The Allies sources were limited by the terrain which meant that German forces could use the trees and hills to mask their movements along with muffling the noise of their equipment. There is also the possibility that many of the Allied divisions were new to France and had never had the experience they needed to interpret the information correctly. The German's stated that the US Army never used defensive combat patrolling which was a key source of information at the tactical and operational level. This was voiced by the German's after the war.
Aerial reconnaissance was not a strong suit of the US Army Air Force, it only had two Night Fighter Units to perform reconnaissance in all weather and at night. These two squadrons were severely over taxed. In fact, in my studies, the USAAF was never enthused about close air support. It was built has a strategic force and that was it. However, in all, I think the real failure was a simple one, that has plagued military history since the beginning of organized warfare. The idea of planning for what the enemy will do, not what he can do. The Japanese fell into this trap at Midway, we did at Pearl Harbor and I suspect the German's did at Stalingrad. Throughout history, this failure has shown its ugly head.
Anyway, these are just some of the brief factors that made the Wacht Am Rhein possible, in my opinion.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 27, 2019 20:44:05 GMT -6
In all the documentaries that I have seen and some books, the responsibility for the failure to understand what the German's were planning rests on the US Army. That is a simple explanation and has some validity. However, we know that the Allies were having logistical issues. Antwerp, the key to logistics for the Allies had only been cleared of mines in November. Boulogne, Calais and Cherbourg either were in German hands or were destroyed. I mentioned this already. There were also new US Army division entering the front and they needed to have on-the-job training.
The Allied commanders understood that you can't be strong everywhere. With Monty on an active operation trying to clear Antwerp and possibly moving on the Rhine, Patton launching his offensive to the east, there had to be a quiet sector for the new troops and to allow the other formations to participate in the two offensives. The Ardennes sector was the ideal location for this weak, quiet sector. It was a calculated risk, one that had to be taken. The key to holding an attack such as the Ardennes was the shoulders and the hinge points. These were held and Patton, stopped his offensive and within 24 hrs. changed the direction of his forces 90 degrees and headed north to relieve Bastogne. This action was never contemplated by the Germans. Probably by the rest of the Allies also, but that was Patton.
On about 23 December 1944, the skies began to clear and now the game was over. St.Vith was held for five days before being abandoned; it was a very important road hub in the north. Elsenborn Ridge in the north was held, Patton relieved Bastogne and finally, on about December 25, the German armor arrived about five miles from the Meuse River, their first objective, out of fuel, and facing one US armored division and a British Household cavalry division. They were stopped, losing 400 tanks, also assisted by Allied fighter bombers due to the clearing weather. The Bulge was finally cutoff by January 16th and three months later, the war in Europe ended. On the Eastern Front, the lack of resources used to launch the Ardennes offensive left the forces facing the Russians with no support and the Russians launched their offensive and move forward easily.
I want to offer an idea that has always buzzed around in my mind about this whole operation and its aftereffects. In my study of military history and history in general, the most important lesson was that one nation had to destroy or at least severely reduce the morale of the other sides fighting forces and the people of the country. There are many examples in history of this. The Ardennes offensive failure did exactly that; it destroyed the German soldier’s morale and that of the people. This is exactly what the Allies needed to happen; the German morale had to be destroyed and amazingly enough, this offensive did just that; how convenient. Could it be, that the Allies, contrary to the numerous books and documents actually understood what was coming and essentially said “Let them come”. In fact, one US officer in the high command actually said that. It would have been easy to play dumb, allow the German’s to attack, but then reinforce the northern and southern shoulders, have Patten conveniently turn 90 degrees and head towards Bastogne. Then, seven days later, the weather changes and now Allied air power can do its thing. It just seems to me that this whole episode is just too convenient for the Allies. They needed destroy German morale and what better way than to let them attack through the area that they were very familiar with and one that in 1940, had exemplified to the German people their superiority. Now, they are stopped and surrounded, losing the whole army that had launched the attack. It probably isn’t true, but it just seems amazing how the very thing the Allies needed to shorten the war, occurred right where it was easiest and best for showing the Germans, the game was over. The Allies never counted on it being such a bloody battle on both sides, but that is the way it turned out. I am certain that if they had examined the possible casualties that might come from allowing such an offensive, they would have stopped it quickly, but who knows. It did end the war quickly and that did save Allied lives and German lives.
This has been fun, Bye.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 30, 2019 12:45:52 GMT -6
I want to offer an idea that has always buzzed around in my mind about this whole operation and its aftereffects. In my study of military history and history in general, the most important lesson was that one nation had to destroy or at least severely reduce the morale of the other sides fighting forces and the people of the country. There are many examples in history of this. The Ardennes offensive failure did exactly that; it destroyed the German soldier’s morale and that of the people. This is exactly what the Allies needed to happen; the German morale had to be destroyed and amazingly enough, this offensive did just that; how convenient. This kinda feels like a stretch to me because there were already so many things going on that were lowering German morale. And it kinda seems like a bit of survivorship bias. It's difficult to picture a scenario in which a nation is defeated but still has high morale. The closest I can think of is the French in 1871 and that's not so much high morale as some modicum of hopefulness. But there are plenty of examples of nations having low morale and pulling through. So I think the causation is probably just the other way, defeat lower morale.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 30, 2019 13:00:04 GMT -6
I want to offer an idea that has always buzzed around in my mind about this whole operation and its aftereffects. In my study of military history and history in general, the most important lesson was that one nation had to destroy or at least severely reduce the morale of the other sides fighting forces and the people of the country. There are many examples in history of this. The Ardennes offensive failure did exactly that; it destroyed the German soldier’s morale and that of the people. This is exactly what the Allies needed to happen; the German morale had to be destroyed and amazingly enough, this offensive did just that; how convenient. This kinda feels like a stretch to me because there were already so many things going on that were lowering German morale. And it kinda seems like a bit of survivorship bias. It's difficult to picture a scenario in which a nation is defeated but still has high morale. The closest I can think of is the French in 1871 and that's not so much high morale as some modicum of hopefulness. But there are plenty of examples of nations having low morale and pulling through. So I think the causation is probably just the other way, defeat lower morale. It is a stretch but I just have the idea that so much in history has depended on morale and that the German morale was declining, there is no doubt about that with around-the-clock bombing, the Russians knocking on the door, and the Allies on or near the Rhine, it just seems like the straw that broke the camels back and it was very convenient. The German high ranking generals were not really enthusiastic about this operation. They wanted a more limited offense, like the ones they had been using as the Allies neared the Rhine. I will have to study this national morale factor over the course of history more in depth. I discovered that Bradley had toured the vulnerable sector with the VIII Corps commander, Maj. General Troy Middleton who held the sector of 80 miles with three divisions. Bradley said to him "Don't worry, Troy, They won't come through here". To which Middleton stated, "Maybe not, Brad, but they've come through this area several times before." Interesting conversation considering that the Allies were aware of the grouping of German divisions near this area. This information had come from ULTRA. Yet, still they did not take any real precautions to speak of.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 31, 2019 10:13:26 GMT -6
"Maybe not, Brad, but they've come through this area several times before." If I'm ever in something which might become historical, I gotta remember to make lots of observations like this cuz they are damn funny in retrospect.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 31, 2019 11:15:35 GMT -6
"Maybe not, Brad, but they've come through this area several times before." If I'm ever in something which might become historical, I gotta remember to make lots of observations like this cuz they are damn funny in retrospect. I agree but only after the fact. I am certain he was just trying to remind Bradley of history and that his forces were very stretched. About 20,000 US troops would not have appreciated the humor, after the fact.
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Post by dorn on Dec 31, 2019 14:26:18 GMT -6
What I found interesting and is not only case of this battle, is information about enemy.
Code decipherment, air scouts, especially naval etc. This was much done better on Allied side than Axis. It give quite an advantage over military operations and economic situation.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 31, 2019 14:45:56 GMT -6
What I found interesting and is not only case of this battle, is information about enemy.
Code decipherment, air scouts, especially naval etc. This was much done better on Allied side than Axis. It give quite an advantage over military operations and economic situation.
Here is a quote from an very well qualified and popular history that worked for the US Army. My apologies for the length, all this piece was important. I am researching in Wages of destruction by Adam Tooze about German morale. He states that by July 1943, the people knew that they had lost the war and that food rationing was lowering the morale. I have other comments when I am ready. Dupuy, Trevor N.. Hitler's Last Gamble: Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 to January 1945 . Endeavour Media. Kindle Edition.
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